Jordan Eberle, Taylor Hall and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins were hot and lucky in 2011-12, but also damn good

Scoring chance data tells a somewhat different story than shots data on the Oilers top forwards.

When you attend Edmonton Oilers games, one thing you will notice in the pre-game warm-up is that four players in particular, Sam Gagner, Jordan Eberle, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Taylor Hall, focus on their stickhandling tricks and feints.

They each get a puck and razzle dazzle it around the ice Globetrotter-like, flashing impressive skill.

Perhaps it makes sense, then, that if you look at which Oilers players are best able to cash in for a goal on the scoring chances that they help to create, Gagner, Eberle, Nugent-Hopkins and Hall are at the top of the list.

As a group, Oilers players cashed in on 18 per cent of the scoring chances they helped to create in 2011-12. Of course, some did better than the average: 23 per cent of the scoring chances that Nugent-Hopkins was involved in ended up as a goal, 22 per cent for Gagner and 21 per cent for Eberle and Hall.

It could be that these four are so skilled and deft, such stone-cold snipers and passers, that when they are involved in a scoring chance (my guideline is a hard shot on net from the slot area) the chance itself is simply superior in quality, that much more dangerous and that much more likely to end up as a goal.

Or it could be that Nugent-Hopkins, Gagner, Eberle and Hall all got a bit hot and a bit lucky last year, and that there is no way that they can sustain that kind of conversion rate on their scoring chances. This case has certainly been made repeatedly with Eberle, who along with having a high scoring chance conversion rate also has a high shooting percentage and a high on-ice shooting percentage.

My final word on Eberle, skill and luck …

The oft-repeated concern (I’ve written about it a few times) is that Eberle won’t be able to maintain these high conversion rates and his goal scoring and point production will drop, so instead of ending up with the 70 to 80 points that most Oilers fans expect he’ll get, he will end up with 50 or 55.

I think the concerns about Eberle’s percentages are half justified. If a player has an extremely high conversion rate on shots and scoring chances, it could be that he’s one of those rare players who can maintain that, but it’s more likely he got both hot and lucky for the season, and both his contributions to goals and official points totals are headed for an adjustment.

However — and this is where I greatly differ from those who put a ton of weight only in shots metrics — I have a strong hunch that if a player is chipping in on a high number of scoring chances, as Eberle did in 2011-12, it’s my bet that this is sustainable.

Eberle helped to create 404 scoring chances last year. I can see no reason why he won’t do the same in 2012-13, save for injury. He’s likely to be face tough-ish competition again, but also to get the advantage of starting a high percentage of faceoffs in the offensive zone. He’s likely to be teamed up with fellow scoring aces Taylor Hall and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins again, and maybe with young sniper Nail Yakupov.

Can he still get an official point on a team-leading 0.19 per cent of his chances? That’s likely a stretch. But if he puts up, say, 420 scoring chances, and converts them into official points at, say, 16 per cent — a good but not outlandish rate — that would mean he’ll score 67 points.

I’ve predicted he’ll put up 68, and I remain comfortable with that.

As for Hall, Gagner and Nugent-Hopkins, Hall put up about the same rate of scoring chances last year as Eberle, so I’m not worried about a huge drop-off there either.

Here are the totals for the four players:

Power play scoring chance rates per 15 minutes

Nugent-Hopkins 7.22 chances created per 15

Hall 6.58

Eberle 6.51

Gagner 5.19

Even strength scoring chance rates per 15 minutes

Eberle 4.03 chances created per 15

Hall 3.76

Nugent-Hopkins 3.29

Gagner 2.96

At even strength, Eberle and Hall chip in on scoring chances at about the same high rate, but Gagner and Nugent-Hopkins do not, while Gagner is also a bit sluggish on the power play.

Nugent-Hopkins is a killer on the power play, but he contributed as a significantly slower rate as even strength, and Gagner’s rate was even lower.

Cause for worry? Maybe with Gagner, but if he’s not quite as hot and lucky this coming season, I expect his point totals will remain strong because the quality of his linemates is going to go up. He’s firmly entrenched as the second line centre, and is likely to get a lot of time with Eberle, Hall, Ales Hemsky and Nail Yakupov.

And RNH? He was just 18-years-old last season. He will come back stronger, faster, more experienced. I don’t see why he won’t continue to rip it up on the power play and I think it’s reasonable to expect his even strength play to move in the direction of his power play dominance. No, he won’t be an even strength monster next year, but he should be somewhat better and chip in on a somewhat higher rate of scoring chances, maybe 3.50 chances per 15.

I should add one proviso, that I’ve only been tracking scoring chance data on the Oilers for two years, that I don’t have league wide data to compare with my own findings. As I track this stat for more years, I’ll have a better sense on whether or not players can maintain both high scoring chance contribution rates and high scoring chance conversion rates.

But, as I said, right now my bet is that players who were able to help create a high rate of scoring chances in the past, such as Eberle and Hall, should be able to do so in the future, though it’s less likely that players will be able to maintain what I suspect to be extraordinarily high scoring chance conversion rates.

P.S.

When you look at Dennis King’sscoring chance numbers,they match up with these findings. King gives players credit for a scoring chance if they’re on the ice for the chance (while I only give credit when a player is actually involved in the chance). King found that RNH was on the ice for 277 chances this year, 4.73 per 15, Hall 293, 4.89 per 15, Eberle 330, 4.53 per 15 and Gagner 265, 3.71 per 15.

I couldn’t find power play data for King’s numbers but on the even strength data we see Eberle and Hall very close when it comes the Oilers creating score chances when they were on the ice.

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